Military facilities, including shipboard electronic instrumentation, require frequent testing and calibration in order to operate reliably. Efforts have been made in recent years to develop a single testing apparatus which is capable of testing a wide variety of electronic devices. The advantage of such an approach is to avoid the cost and inconvenience of having individual test equipment for electronic devices to be tested.
Generally, such test apparatus, known as automatic test equipment (ATE), will provide a parallel digital output to a device or unit undergoing test (UUT). As test data is generated by the automatic test equipment, the response of a connected UUT is detected and compared to an expected response. Failure to respond properly uncovers a fault with the UUT.
The problems with available prior art test equipment are: a relatively low operating speed and the lack of conveniently testing the capability of a UUT to operate in a tri-state condition.